PC Pro January 2016

I WORKED IN AN OFFICE FOR 16 YEARS: an office an hour and a half from my home, once you take into account the bike ride, train journey, bus ride, and all the waiting and walking in between. And the reverse applies for the home trip. That’s a fifth of my waking hours swallowed by the commute. But you’ll notice the past tense, because all of that changed a few weeks ago when I switched to a completely different approach. I’m now living the remote working dream, not the come-into-the-office-come-hell-or-highwater vision that became fashionable back in the day when Dickens created Ebenezer Scrooge. Why did I stick to that routine for so long? And why, assuming you’re still doing the 9 to 5 immortalised by Dolly Parton, do you? I fully appreciate…

Jon Honeyball Apple’s recent “Chipgate” scandal offered a rare glimpse into the grubby inner workings of the phone production and distribution process, explains Jon on p130 Alan Richards Microsoft promises that Office 2016 “takes the work out of working together”. To find out what this means in practice, read Alan’s guide on p104 Adam Banks Brand-new consumer-protection laws will change the way we buy software, apps and digital downloads. Adam reveals whether it’s really a win for the users on p16 Tom Arah If you need cheap, but good, images for your site or marketing, Adobe reckons it has the answer with Stack. Tom reveals if it’s really such a bargain on p116…

AMAZON HAS SUED more than 1,000 people for posting fake reviews as it fights back against those sellers trying to “gain unfair competitive advantages” by paying for positive recommendations on products. The anonymous defendants all sold their review-writing services via Fiverr, which lets users earn $5 (£3.25) for small tasks. Fiverr isn’t named as a defendant, with Amazon instead targeting the individuals. A Fiverr spokesperson said: “We actively remove services that violate our terms of use, and respond promptly to any reports of inappropriate content.” Fiverr said it restricts “reviews to only those who we can verify have actually purchased a service” However, at the time of publishing, multiple ads were posted on Fiverr offering to review businesses on local Google listings, iTunes, Facebook and Amazon. According to Amazon’s court filing, some don’t…

WESTERN DIGITAL HAS snapped up SanDisk for $19 billion (£12 billion), suggesting that even a tech giant can’t survive in storage without a bit of flash. The deal will combine WD’s consumer and enterprise products with SanDisk’s flash memory, as the industry shifts away from hard disks to solid-state storage in laptops, PCs and data centres. The storage market has been in a sustained period of consolidation, but the past few weeks have seen even more activity than usual. In addition to the SanDisk takeover, Dell snapped up enterprise storage giant EMC for $67 billion. Analysts say the storage firms are being forced to join forces to survive. “While the names of the specific companies are somewhat surprising, the actual acquisition makes sense within the competitive landscape,” said Dee Robinson, analyst at IHS…

UBER HAS WON its latest legal battle, but the war for Britain’s roads continues. The High Court ruled that Uber’s ride-hailing app isn’t a taxi meter, in a case brought by Transport for London (TfL) with the backing of London’s black-cab drivers. Calum Murray, head of commercial technology at law firm Kemp Little, said the win helps strengthen Uber’s position, in London at least. “What Uber is doing, there’s clearly a demand for it,” he said. “It’s now been found by TfL and the courts not to be in breach of regulation.” Squeaky wheel Uber tends to enter a market whether it meets local regulations or not, sometimes leading to bans in cities such as Paris and Rio de Janeiro. Of course, in some cases – including London – it’s eventually found…

CRIME IS FALLING in Britain – until you include cybercrime. Crime peaked at 19 million offences in 1995, which has, in the past decade, slid to seven million. But as the Office for National Statistics (ONS) noted: “It has been argued that crime has not actually fallen but changed, moving to newer forms of crime not captured by the survey measurement” To watch for such a shift, the ONS has begun tracking online fraud and cybercrime, and has estimated that 5.1 million incidents of fraud affected 3.8 million victims over the past year. This is in addition to the 2.5 million crimes that fell under the Computer Misuse Act, such as hacking. Standard crime vs online attacks How likely are you to get your money back? The cost of crime Of the 2.6 million online…